The Mikado

For the confirmed D'Oyly Carte enthusiast, J. Arthur Rank's current production of "The Mikado" will probably be a disappointment. While a play like "Hamlet" falls naturally into a movie, even after it has been dismembered and reassembled differently, "The Mikado" on celluloid somehow just doesn't seem right. Perhaps this is because musical plays are basically improbable; choruses drift on and off stage for no apparent reason, and players sing lines which would be better spoken. But on the stage no one notices these irregularities, and certainly no one cares.

The Gilbert libretti were written exclusively for the stage, and no amount of editing could possibly adapt them successfully to the screen. J. Arthur Rank's attempt is almost bizzare. Its cast is a mixture of stage and screen actors, each group obliged to assume the function of the other, and neither succeeding very well.

Happily the film has its redeeming features--to be specific, Martyn Green, Sidney Granville, and the D'Oyly Carte Chorus. Known to every loyal Saveyard, oldtimers Green and Granville don't seem to mind the cameras at all; a gag's a gag, and these two know how to use one. Sydney Granville, as Pooh-Bah, looks more like Friar Tuck than Lord High Everything Else, but he plays the part for all its' worth. As for Martyn Green, anyone who has ever seen the man in action knows that the show could rock and he'd still save it.